Farming Elo Points

-I’ve played chess since I was 6 years old that’s when I got my first chessboard. I played ton of chess, I can't say I was good but I could beat everybody in my school. I kept playing until I was 17. at that age, I completely abandoned chess for more than 5 years, for reasons that only matter to me. years later when I came back to it, I crushed it. I gained a lot of Elo rating in a short time. right now, I’m 2339 on chess.com and my FIDE rating is 2081.I'm only two tournaments away from CM title I'll explain why I'm not going for those tournaments later in this slide, overal I’m sharing this from personal experience. I'm not going to talk about online ratings, because they don’t really matter, the important rating is the international FIDE rating.

-here is the fastest ways to gain ELO, this going to be focused on how to pick your tournaments and use a database of your advantage, these two might sound like very mutually exclusive topics but they overlap quite a bit

-first is tournaments. play quads all right that's all there is to it, end of slide (jk) but seriously playing quads is is the fastest way I found to gain ELO, by quads I mean play small tournaments, such as local chess clubs or community events where they meet every once, like every once a week, avoid big tournaments, unless you're seriously underrated, for example you haven't played in 5 years and you've been studying like Kung Fu on a high Mountain but other than that avoid big tournaments.

-so why do you want to play small tournaments? well what tends to happen is, number one : old fucks tend to gather there and number two the same people play there every single week, so why should you play old people, no disrespect or anything but as people tend to get older they just dont have it, they're not at their prime anymore, they don't practice as much, they have other responsibilities. so these older fellows tend to come every week they play mostly for fun many which are at their floor, they used to be really good, they were once at their prime, they might have been like 2200, or 2300 but now they must have dropped like 200 points, maybe there's a floor at like 1800 2000 2100 they're unable to drop below, they have the floor but they still give the same ELO, you beat them at 2000 over and over again they just keep giving you the same ELO. it's perfect for farming of course, this might sound terrible but you know what works.

- it works right anyway so why are quads? because since every week you go to quads they will pair you with players near your rating, for example if you're 1800 or 1900 they'll pair you with maybe a 2000 and every week they will pair you with the same guy. or maybe nearly the same guy, maybe every other week. so it's optimal for gaining ELO. people close to your ELO are giving you more ELO, they're not as hard. it's like the perfect middle ground. you don't want them too low because then they don't give you anything. you don't want them too high because they beat you sometimes. and it gets really annoying.

- combine the previous statement with my second point which is that they all always go there every single week, so that's the perfect ELO farm, they're at their floor they give you the same ELO every time you play them. you might ask what if I can't beat them even after they're at their floor, let's say I'm a 1600 and the guy is an 1800 or 1900 and he just beats me every time, that's a great question.

-this is where your database comes into play, this part this part is going to take a lot of hard work and effort. first of all picking tournaments is generally not that hard, just go to small tournaments in any local ches club, what's really hard is the database it's where the real grind comes from, any database works as long as you can store your past games I know Lichess has a free online database where you just put in your game and then you can save it to your account, "Fritz" that's what I use, any other database works too, I've been using the pirated version of Fritz for years I don't use any like online top 10 popular games or opening book because I suck at openings but Fritz mainly, just to store my games, anything that can store your games, because you can't store your games in your memory, you can't store your games on your notation too because you're going to lose it (you will) so you want to store it in one consolidated location where you have a big database.

-so now that you created your database then enter every single game you play from now on, you play three games at a quad you go home you enter your game. what's even better is you play the game, you get your notation sheet between, you enter your game, include the name of your opponent, the date the tournament, and all the relevant informations, so it's easy to search.

-you've created this database where you put every single every single game you play. now it becomes like a specialized cheat bang for you, from every single person you played, it's specialized to you. it's not like you look, learn, you try to find a chess.com account online, to see what games they've played before. no these guys are specialized to YOU , they've played YOU, they've played YOUR opening they played in your opening you know exactly what they do so it's like you have perfect memory, a photographic memory even.

-let's say there's the old guy at the local club who keeps cooking your ass, so this is your third game against him maybe your fourth game against him and you're getting cooked over and over again, but guess what now, you have the resources to adapt, improvise and overcome. you can look at your games you can see what openings he plays beforehand, white black, you can see his style of playing you can see what he likes to do, what strategies he likes to do, and guess what. that guy, he probably isn't doing as much work as you are, he's just there to meet his old buddies, and have some fun maybe socialize every saturday every sunday. you know he's not really there to get better because he passed that, he's not playing chess as his job. if you're still reading this you really want to gain ELO. you're motivated to gain ELO. these guys and not just old fellows pretty much everyone in local chess clubs, they do care about their ELO yes but they are not as driven as you are right, they're not going to be looking into this one guy they played three three times, it just doesn't happen. they might just leave somewhere else once they exist the chess club, you're them.you're constantly improving while the other guy is not. your competition is stagnant.

a fun fact I actually often pull games from over like 6 years ago when I'm facing club members at my local club because they just don't adapt, they never do, they just don't change, they like an opening and they like that opening for life. they pick an "opening" and they just play that forever. here is the thing, there's only so many times you can play an obscure opening, once you play a Gambit it's only going to surprise me once, the second time you play it against me I know, I've seen this before, I've recorded your opening. that's pretty much the gameplay. you locate vulnerable clubs, you farm their ELO, and once you surpass their rating for example the person you were farming or the average rating was like 1,600 and now you're 1,800 move to the next club, go to the 2,000 club, just move on it's a gameplay Loop, you just farm. you go play you see what they play you adapt, improvise, and then you overcome.

- local clubs aren't that hard to find, every small town has a club, you can even host your own tournaments, that stuff is very common now to have small chess club because is chess is going big.

lastly, why avoid big tournaments ? they're expensive, normal local clubs are like $20 max per entry, and you got to play three games. specifically quads, compared to a $100 big tournament entry fees for like seven games I remember, we ar minimizing games for ELO, not for fun, if you want to play for fun just play online. if you want to gain ELO if you want to increase your ELO, you need to be thinking about this.

- this is probably the most important thing if money is not your concern then you might be like okay I just play big tournaments. you know big tournament players are just... stronger, like way stronger LOL. pick any big tournament, everyone there is a strong player, especially from International. they're there to represent their country they're not they're not there to just around right they're they're locked in man they of course they've been grinding practice before and they're like they're locked in man like speaking from experience I've been cooked so many many so many times by people lower than my R because they're just locked in they've been doing tactics for weeks weeks weeks you know big tournaments are where people go to perform right small tournaments are where people come go to Vibe right so if you're locked in at a small tournament you're going to cook everybody but if you're locked in at a big tournament you're just like everybody else.

- okay so in summary, just play small tournaments they're really good to gain ELO, just record and study the players there, they tend to be weaker, more predictable, less adaptive, make sure your database is up to date so you always have the jump on the players you've played before, and finally only play big tournaments if you're looking for fun, they're not really optimized for rating growth these strats are definitely taking decently far and I hope they work for you